Meghan M. Biro is a globally recognized Talent Management and HR Tech strategist, digital catalyst, author and speaker. As founder and CEO of TalentCulture and Co-Founder of the #TChat World of Work Community, she has worked with hundreds of companies, from early-stage ventures to global brands like Microsoft, IBM and Google, helping them recruit and empower stellar talent.
She began her recruiting career working on a research team at Yale University and then moved into software technology markets. Meghan has been a guest on numerous radio shows and online forums, and has been a featured speaker at global conferences.
She is the co-author of The Character-Based Leader: Instigating a Revolution of Leadership One Person at a Time, and is a regular contributor at Forbes, Huffington Post and Entrepreneur. Meghan regularly serves on advisory boards for leading HR and technology brands.
Meghan has been voted one of the Top 100 Social Media Power Influencers in 2015 by StatSocial and Forbes, Top 50 Most Valuable Social Media Influencers by General Sentiment, Top 100 on Twitter Business, Leadership, and Tech by Huffington Post, and Top 25 HR Trendsetters by HR Examiner.
Meghan can be reached via email at mbiro@talentculture.com, on Twitter at @TalentCulture and @MeghanMBiro, or on LinkedIn.

Free Agent Nation Romance: The Good, The Bad, And The Unknown

You know the story. Once upon a time, companies courted new talent with the promise of a lifelong relationship. “Work” meant employment, training, benefits, and job security for years, if not decades. But for many, if not most companies and employees, the romance has died.

Bottom Line: the workforce of today is specialized and highly virtual: working part-time, mobile, from home, and often on a contract basis. Our research shows that among large employers upwards of 32% of all positions are now “part-time” or contract-based.

Bersin argues that social media have enabled employers and a fast-moving, trained workforce to link up with “local projects, local tasks, and local jobs.” He gives the examples of the rapid growth of job boards such as TaskRabbit and GigWalk, and notes that

“this mode of work has hit the corporate market as well. . . . But they don’t see what’s really coming – an explosion of mobile, virtual, local workers. One can think of these new services as “mobile-enabled, local job-boards” – but what they really are is enablers of the younger, more virtual workforce.

Here’s the bottom line and our collective reality check. Bersin sums it up nicely here “the contingent workforce is now a permanent fixture, so many elements of talent management, recruiting and engagement are being extended to these mobile ‘free agents.’”

Really? Just how well are leaders rising to the occasion in this “highly scalable” new world order they’ve created?

Let’s take a closer look at this Brave New Free Agent World of Work.

1) The Good

Flexibility. For both employers and employees. Lots of my friends, especially my momfriends, like having freelance jobs for that reason.

Varied work experiences. Freelances can try different kinds of work and companies, without committing to any of them. They are “pan-opportunists.”

New skills. We like having the chance to reinvent ourselves and gain new skills. We never stop dreaming. This is very exciting.

Savings for companies. Firms save millions by not giving benefits or providing training or career ladders, and by freely expanding or contracting their workforce as needed. (All of which gives us a fascinating meaning to the word free in “free agents” and “freelancers” . . . )

Adapting to the new culture. “The fast-moving, technologically dynamic global economy has forced leaders to think about work in modular, ever- shifting ways. Organizations that can adapt, change, and innovate quickly have an advantage today. [Having] contingent and contract workers can facilitate this change.”

2) The Bad

No bennies. While my freelancer friends like the flexibility, none of them likes the lack health care, sick time, vacation pay, or other bennies. Many of them would willingly give up the flexibility if they could find work at firms offering these benefits.

No job security. Ever had that pit-in-the-stomach feeling as one project ends and you can’t see the next one over the horizon?

No training. No comment. There is no excuse for bad leadership. This should be a must for all companies and leaders. Even for “consultants” or “free lancers”

No engagement. What’s being done by leading-edge companies to ensure that contingent workers fit into the culture and engage with the organization? In fact, in nearly every way you can name, contractors are still considered “second-class citizens” in most corporate settings.

Less stability. The most stable firms are those that have stable and loyal employees. Oh no. Not good.

3) The Unknown

Have companies and their employees broken up for good?

Williams and Bersin seem to agree that contingent work is here to stay, in massive numbers. And so do I. The facts speaks for themselves.

Williams:

Dana Shaw, former senior Vice-President for Staffing Industry Analysts, reported that in the Fortune 100 companies, contingent workers make up 20-30% of the workforce, but predicts it will soon be 50%. Statistics Canada reported that by 2009, 52% of all temporary jobs were contract jobs, 25% of them were professionals. . . . McKinsey &Co. reported that 65% of U.S. corporations have restructured their workforce and have no plans to return to pre-recession employment, but rather are opting for contingent and contract work when the need for expansion takes place.

What about innovation? What does freelancers’ “pan-opportunism” mean for innovation? The results aren’t in. All I know for sure is that innovation generally comes from companies who nurture their teams, support their passions, and given them scope to imagine and produce. This does not sound like a description of a company dependent on a contingent workforce.

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I worked as a PR contractor for 5 years — the bonus of not having the benefits was the ability to grow my own client base while I had a steady amount of work from another PR firm but I wasn’t under a non-compete. I was able to juggle both and eventually spin off into my own firm which now has 12 people — a good mixture of full time and some high level contractors. As an employer I have grown to accept vacation, sick time and non-billable hours but they still drive me crazy!

You sound like a great employer — even though you don’t love having to deal with vacation, sick time, and so on (in fact, it drives you nuts :)), you do it anyway. I assume you weren’t required to, since most employers have to have 30+ (or even 50+) employees before being required to offer certain benefits. So… Why did you decide to offer these bennies? Don’t get me wrong — I think it’s great for your employees, for your company, and for workplace culture.

my neighbor’s mother-in-law makes $73 hourly on the computer. She has been without a job for 9 months but last month her paycheck was $12421 just working on the computer for a few hours. Go to this web site and read more… www.Buzz75.com

Having been a freelancer, a government employee, and private sector employee, I can agree with all the benefits, drawbacks and unknowns of free agency you listed. The fact is, “regular” employment has been “contingent” for at least a decade with the rise of at will employment, union membership dropping, and the changing global economy. Hopefully healthcare options for the self-employed will improve as the market for it improves – who knows what the impact of Obama’s healthcare law will be.

Career Key’s article, Free Agent Outlook on Work, gives six principles people can follow that keeps both regular and more contingent work in perspective. People need to make a mental shift about work in general – thinking about jobs in a different way and putting their personal priorities first. http://www.careerkey.org/asp/career-options/free_agent_worker.html

Juliet–So sorry I’m late seeing your comment! You’ve made a crucial point: “regular” employment has been fairly irregular for a long time, esp. regarding benefits, and, as you point out, a decreasing union membership (the fact is, union protections and wage rates are critical in maintaining bennies for all of us–union or not–regardless of one’s views of unions). Thanks so much for the pointer on the article — I’ll definitely check it out!

I can’t believe that job boards have not figured it out yet. I tell you this though, we are close to launching a site that is a social network, a job board, and a place where freelancers can connect to employment opportunities. Check out the link below to find out more…..

Thanks, Social Jobs Board — this is really awesome, but give us a little detail: is it a Craigslist, but just for jobs? a taskrabbit? Tell us how your network will add something new for employers and job seekers! I’m excited about this — and believe that it IS the way of the future…